


The Carnivore Who Does Calculus

by knowyourrights



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Ruining History (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Really just these two being twats, Ryan Bergara Being an Idiot, Secret Relationship, Shane Madej Being an Idiot, Shane Madej being Shane Madej, Slow Burn, Tutoring, bad math puns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-02 19:04:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16310921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knowyourrights/pseuds/knowyourrights
Summary: Ryan Bergara was beyond pissed off that he had to tutor some idiot in math. Even if, yeah, it was his fault. He was still allowed to be pissed.And then, there was a clatter of doorknobs being turned, and Shane Madej opened the door.





	1. No Morning Is Complete Without Shane Madej On The Other Side Of The Door

Ryan wasn’t a big believer in omens, but the pathetic fallacy was strong as he cycled through suburban Chicago, his body shivering in the morning wind and the sky flat with an eery grey. He knew that he was the one to blame for the cycle up Cherry Street, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still be pissed about it. Not turning up to nearly a quarter of his lessons for the first term of his junior year of high school probably wasn’t his brightest idea, but it wasn’t like he needed those lessons. Shit, he knew for a fact that he was better at math than most of the seniors, and those hours could be spent at home, getting through all of the Uncharted games. 

And Resident Evil.   
And Red Dead.   
All of that had gone perfectly, of course, with him buried in his unmade bed, wearing only his underwear, making his mother proud. What hadn’t gone perfectly was not getting caught, and now he was paying the price.   
Ryan was sucked out of his thoughts by the tinny tune of Stacy’s Mom blaring from his phone.   
He answered the call, an agonised groan as his greeting, frustrated by his predicament.   
“Good morning to you too.” Andrew’s monotone voice called out.   
“Are you just calling to rub my nose in the fact that you’re in bed, jacking off, or some stupid shit like that?” Ryan asked, yawning. He wasn’t used to being up before ten on a Saturday.   
“Can you not bitch at me because you’re facing the consequences of your actions? This is called you getting your comeuppance.” Andrew replied dryly, and Ryan internally scoffed, guessing that was his word of the day. Andrew loved shit like that.   
“It’s just that I have better things to do with my time than do community fucking service, by tutoring some idiot because he can’t quit doing crack for two seconds to get a C in geometry.” Ryan said, exasperated.   
He could almost hear the perplexed smile in Andrew’s voice. “You think Shane Madej does crack?”  
“Probably! I’m not an expert on crack!” Ryan was being entirely honest. When it came to mind-altering substances, he was as good as scared straight. Andrew would never let him forget about the time that he threw up after drinking a glass of champagne at the Bergara New Year’s Eve party when they were fifteen.   
“Are you scared of him? You sound kind of scared of him.” Andrew theorised.   
And yeah, maybe he had a point. Ryan was scared of the seniors who hung out underneath the bleachers. Ryan was also scared of crack.   
Ergo, Shane Madej, who seemed to live under the bleachers, and who presumably smoked crack, scared Ryan very much.   
“It’s like- shit man. He’s gonna eat me alive.” Ryan let out, hands clenched on his bike handles.   
He could hear Andrew pause for a second. “Its like you’re a bunny, and he’s-“  
“A tiger.” Ryan interrupted. “A tiger who does fuckin’ trigonometry.”   
“Actually, the specific reason you have to do this is because he’s not doing trigonometry.”   
“Maybe he should go to a maths lesson then.” Ryan found it hard to have sympathy for Shane Madej, who was failing math, partially because he didn’t have sympathy for idiots, and partially because this failure led to him getting out of bed at eight in the morning.   
“Shit, you two should have a lot to bond over then. You see the irony here, right?” Andrew’s flat voice called out.  
“Fuck you.” Ryan cheerfully retorted. He and Shane Madej weren’t comparable. Ryan Bergara didn’t turn up to lessons, but he also didn’t need to.   
Hey, he didn’t make the flawed education system, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t allowed to profit from it, Ryan thought to himself.   
“Well, don’t come crying to me when he kicks your ass because you say something dumb and rude.” Andrew called out.   
Ryan felt his jaw clench as he saw the street sign of the road he was turning into. Archer Lane was one of the nicer areas in the neighbourhood, defined by large weeping willows and those big, creamy white, colonial houses. It was a pretty neat road for a crack addict to live on, but Ryan guessed that crack was an expensive habit and Shane Madej’s rich parents could supply him with the cash he needed.   
“I gotta go, Andrew. Destiny awaits.” He said, sarcasm dripping from his voice as he found himself parking his bike in the driveway of number 26. It was one of the largest houses on the street, and a quaint gravel path led up to the imposing oak front door.   
“Good luck, man.” And with that, and a small chuckle, Ryan was left alone with the giant house. The idea of Shane Madej wandering around these streets seemed impossible; he would stick out like a sore thumb, in his oversized denim jackets and combat boots.   
He gave a timid knock at the door, silently praying to any higher power that may be that this was the right house and that he wouldn’t be harassing some poor old lady on a Saturday morning. The knock gave a loud, hollow thump, like the entire street was echoing it back to him. Ryan half expected a skeleton to jump out at him from one of the perfectly manicured bushes, because the experience was eerily similar to how trick or treating had felt ten years prior.   
And then, there was a clatter of doorknobs being turned, and Shane Madej opened the door.


	2. The Million Layers Of Pretentious Armour In Which I Have Adorned Myself

Ryan didn’t know what he was expecting.   
He didn’t exactly assume that Shane would stumble out in his boxers, with a bong in one hand an a crack pipe in the other, frothing at the mouth, but he definitely wasn’t expecting this.   
Shane Madej, who sat beneath the bleachers and got suspended for smoking in a janitorial closet and stood up to teachers when their rules were bullshit- was standing awkwardly in the doorway, in a pale blue button up shirt, running long fingers through his hair.   
The two stared at each other for several seconds, both unsure of what to say. Ryan had never spoken to Shane Madej before in his entire life, and here he was, at the entrance gate to the most private part of his life.   
“So,” Ryan started, before realising that he had nothing to add. The word trailed off, leaving them back in absolute silence.   
“Um, do you want to come in?” Shane asked, shifting from one foot to he other in the upmost uncomfortable way that he possibly could have.   
‘No.’ Ryan thought, stepping into the house, with Shane carefully closing the door behind him.   
Ryan had to resist the urge to gawp at the interior, feeling a sudden and intense need to wash his hands before touching anything that he could see.   
It looked just like he imagined the White House would.   
“You live here?” Ryan sputtered out, his brain desperately rewiring to adjust to the new discoveries.   
“Yeah, I know. Everyone’s always surprised.” Shane, said, leaning on the edge of a grand piano casually placed in the open plan entrance, making Ryan cringe at the unconcerned air of his actions. He couldn’t imagine being able to lean on something with the same worth as his upcoming college debt.   
“Well, you don’t really dress like you live here.” Ryan said, biting his tongue the second the words left his mouth. ‘Nice job, idiot’ He thought to himself.   
Shane looked taken aback for a moment, before letting out a low chuckle that seemed to create a tornado of butterflies in Ryan’s stomach.   
“Harsh.” He commented, beginning to lead Ryan up the spiralling staircase.   
Ryan bit his lip as they entered Shane’s bedroom, feeling like an intruder. He didn’t belong in this house, let alone in this allusive crack addict’s bedroom. Posters clung to the slanted roof, from rock bands that Ryan had never heard of to graphic Sin City ones. Ryan’s eyes trailed on a larger poster of Megan Fox in Transformers, that scene when she was fixing the car and no one could focus on a word she was saying. He internally cringed as he remembered his mother walking in on him jacking off to that scene in 7th grade.   
His eyes continued to train across the wall until he reached a shelf above the television, with trophies of various sizes packed onto it. Certificates and ribbons on the wall above added to the surprising image. Ryan couldn’t imagine what Shane Madej would have achieved to warrant the awards, since it seemed like all he had done for the past five years was get high and skip class.   
“You have a lot of awards.” He commented, unsure of what else to say about the mildly staggering discovery.   
“You’re surprised.” Shane flopped down on his bed, raising his eyebrows at the younger teenager.   
“Well, you just don’t seem like the type to-“  
“To do well in life?” Shane interrupted, giving that same chuckle he gave whenever Ryan said some idiotic statement about Shane’s reputation.   
“I didn’t mean that!” Ryan tripped over himself to backtrack out of the hole he had dug himself into.   
“Nah, you’re not the only person to not mean that. People are full of ideas about me.” Shane shrugged, flicking pieces of lint and fluff off of the bed absentmindedly.   
Ryan smiled, attempting to joke with the guy who had terrified him just minutes earlier. “Shit, this is getting a little too John Green-y for my tastes.”  
Shane let out a snort of laughter, his serious expression cracking into a wide smile, his eyes crinkling. “Finally, I can remove the million layers of pretentious armour in which I have adorned myself!”  
Ryan gave a small laugh as he began pulling his pencil case and textbook out of his backpack. Shane gave an irritated groan as he saw the items, as though he had forgotten the reason that Ryan had come over in the first place. Ryan gulped down the warm feeling that appeared when he thought of Shane wanting to see him regardless of math grades.   
Ew.   
Ryan could admit that Shane Madej was an attractive guy- sure, in that thin, heroin addict-kinda way. He could see wannabe grunge girls losing their shit over him and his edgy ass, but Ryan was not a wannabe grunge girl. And he definitely didn’t like boys.   
Especially rich, bizarrely charming, crackhead boys.   
After nearly an hour had passed, and somewhere between graphing trigonometric functions and oblique triangles, whilst Shane was doing a problem on his own, Ryan began watching him. He had these noticeable habits when he was concentrating, like running his long fingers through his hair before letting his hand rest on the top of his head, biting his bottom lip, and digging his nails into the eraser on the back of the pencil. There was something so striking about his looks, with his hollowed out cheeks and hooded eyes.   
“Wait, so finding the arcsin-“ he looked up, noticing Ryan staring at him in a pleasant sort of slight confusion. “What?”  
“It’s nothing, it’s just-“ Ryan paused, internally debating whether the next comment would get him thrown out. “You’re really not what I expected to find.”  
Shane put his pencil down, resting his chin on one hand. “Because you expected me to verbally abuse you, right?”  
Well, it was kind of true. Shane was apparently pretty psycho, and Ryan couldn’t help but remind himself of the countless rumours of Shane throwing chairs and storming out of lessons. And, yeah- maybe Shane actually seemed pretty nice, Ryan wasn’t quite willing to turn his back to him just yet.   
“You do swear at teachers.” One time his chemistry teacher had heard Ryan call Andrew a jackass in their freshman year, and Ryan had nearly cried from embarrassment. Time may have passed, but Ryan could never shake that.   
“I don’t pretend to agree with shit that I don’t like. If someone’s being an asshole, I tell them.” Shane dig his nails deeper into the eraser, leaning back in his desk chair.   
“I’d like to think that I’m the same.” The younger teenager scoffed quietly to himself, knowing deep down that it was not true. He was too much of a pussy to be honest. Cowardice and honesty were mutually exclusive.   
“Neither of us perform for strangers.” Shane gave a timid smile.   
Ryan frowned in response, feeling deeply uncultured.   
“Jane Austen.” Clarified Shane.   
“Oh.”  
Sometimes people shock you. 

As Ryan cycled home just before lunch, he couldn’t get the quote out of his head. What crackhead read Jane Austen? Shane Madej, apparently. Ryan couldn’t help but feel a tinge of affection for the senior, who quoted Jane Austen and whined about how society perceived him.   
What a jackass.   
A jackass that Ryan couldn’t help but think about.   
Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lindsay ellis created the chapter title with logic armour.


	3. A+ Self Esteem

“So, If the area is 225ft squared, what would you divide that by to find the length of the second diagonal?” Ryan traced over the rhombus that was printed in front of them, trying desperately to explain it well, and praying that Shane would spring up and declare that he knew the answer.  
Shane did not spring up.   
He simply sat at the other end of his bed, chewing a hole into his pencil, looking endlessly baffled.   
“Fuck- the base length?” Shane looked up with those worried eyes he always had whenever he was completely lost. “I swear to god, this is fucking impossible. Watch Neil Patrick Harris fuck a woman before I figure out how the hell this works.”   
Ryan let out a snort of laughter at the comment, raising his eyebrows at the comment.   
“Neil Patrick Harris could have fucked women, for all we know.” He shrugged, leaning against the back wall of Shane’s bedroom as he sat on the older boy’s bed. In all of his years, he had never expected to find himself in Shane Madej’s bed.   
Well, on.   
Same difference.   
Shane glanced up with unimpressed eyes. “Come on, the guy is probably the queerest thing to walk the planet.” He protested.   
“Well, it takes a queer to know a queer.” Ryan gave a ‘so, there.’ Expression as he flicked his pen across the room, sensing that the time for math was done, because when Shane decided that he was over doing work, that was that.   
“Fuck off, what if I was a queer? I would be beyond offended right now.” Shane stood up, pulling his sweatshirt off, his t-shirt caught in the movement and dragged up with it. Ryan attempted to take his eyes off of the pale, toned torso that was momentarily exposed to him, and failed.   
“Well, if you were a queer, you would be absolutely losing your shit over me.” Ryan found himself toying with the idea that, in the three Saturdays that they had spent together, Shane was secretly crazy about him.   
The older teenager let out an enthusiastic laugh, “Shit, someone’s got some A+ self esteem going on!”  
Ryan bit his lip to keep from smiling, because the idea that he would have more self-confidence than Shane Madej was beyond crazy. Shane Madej, who smoked crack between classes, who had allegedly pulled the fire alarm during the SATs when he was only a freshman, who had screwed at least three girls.  
To Ryan, who spent the majority of his time masturbating and yelling at his Xbox, three girls might as well have been the entire population of North America.   
And yet, here he was, laughing and talking to this infamous and allusive man just like he would with Andrew.   
Oh God, were they friends?  
He was friends with a crack addict.   
His mother was going to kill him.   
“I’ve gotta use the bathroom, I’ll be back in a second.” Shane said, turning to leave the room.   
“If you’re not back in exactly that amount of time, I’m suing.” Ryan called after him.   
“Wow, what a charming and unique joke.” Shane deadpanned back, voice fading as he made his way down the hall.   
Ryan could hardly contain his excitement. He was friends with a real-life crack addict. Albeit, he had never actually seen Shane get high, but still, the thrill was there. He stood up, taking the brief moment of isolation as an opportunity to explore Shane’s bedroom. He had never really looked around, always making a beeline from the door to the bed, and he was curious. As he approached the back wall, where the shrine of trophies and medals and ribbons and certificates were presented, he began to read the most engravings on them. He had never been close enough to find out what they were actually for.   
‘Illinois Under 18 Pianist of the Year’  
‘1st Place- Chicago Inter-school Grand Piano Recital’  
‘Musical Excellence Award 2017- Shane Madej’  
The further along the line he went, the more countless awards he skimmed through, declaring that Shane Madej had shown tremendous skill and precision in playing the piano, which was-  
Well, which was fairly surprising.   
Ryan scrunched up his face in confusion, because Shane was the bad boy; the rebel; the badass who did whatever he wanted and didn’t give a fuck what anybody else thought.   
He was definitely not a piano prodigy.   
Except when he was.   
Still reeling from the discovery, but egged on by his own curiosity, Ryan continued to explore the bedroom, fingers gracing over objects scattered on top of his dresser and desk. He stopped at the desk drawer, sliding it open, half-expecting to also uncover that Shane had won several Nobel Prizes.   
Ryan had to actively stop himself from squealing at the discovery.   
Because, sitting among abandoned paper clips and forgotten chemistry notes, was the piece de resistance of Ryan’s exploration.   
A thick, transparent cylinder with a sphere at one end. It seemed to be made of glass, with reddish marbling swirled through it, and, of course, Ryan was entirely aware of what this object was.   
A crack pipe.   
Ryan’s day was getting better and better by the minute, because, although the idea of Shane doing crack was truly terrifying to him, he would feel like such a badass when he told his friends- casually, of course- that he hung out with a crack addict every Saturday.   
Ryan’s adrenaline spiked as he heard footsteps crawling down the hall, and he slammed the desk drawer shut, throwing himself back onto the bed with such force that it squeaked beneath him. When Shane entered the room, Ryan was seated exactly where he had been before, mindlessly tapping on random apps on his phone to give the illusion that he had been pre-occupied.   
“So, when you sue me, are we talking just my car or-?” Shane said with a grin.   
“Bitch, I’m about to own this whole house.” Ryan glanced up, returning the smile, but for his own reasons.   
God, Shane Madej was so fucking cool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 50% of this is the word crack

**Author's Note:**

> Alternative title: bad decisions; a 1000 word essay.


End file.
